Presbyterians govern and exercise spiritual oversight in the church through ordained presbyters, or elders acting in collegiality. It is a type of representative democracy. The congregation select their elders from among themselves and it is the congregation that select and call their Minister of word and sacrament.

One hundred years ago, universal suffrage was in the process of being enacted. The Free State granted women the right to vote and be elected to rule in 1922; Northern Ireland granted this in 1928. In 1926, the Presbyterian General Assembly agreed to women having the right to vote and to be elected to an ordained office in the church as ruling elders. This looks like the church merely accepting the validity of the universal suffrage movement.

However, while the “votes for women” campaign may have created a cultural and social context in which the decision of the Presbyterian General Assembly was made, there were numerous other factors at play that brought the church to decide to allow women to vote and to hold an ordained office in the church.

At the end of the 19th century, there was an extraordinary commitment in the Protestant Churches to world mission. Women were to the forefront of this. In fact, for every 10 missionaries going abroad, on average seven of them were women.

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